University (year 2, semester 2) Part 2: Introduction to Applying Unconventional Materials to Knitting
Hello,
Toady’s blog brings us to the second part of
my second semester during my second year at university (feels like i said too many seconds there, so sorry if your confused) and as I explained last
week, this is where I got to pick my own theme/brief. This helped to prepare us
for third year, as we would be doing the same then.
One of the main reasons why I wanted to choose
weave as my specialised subject, instead of knit, was because I could freely
experiment with a variety of different yarns and materials on the loom. Whereas
I was a lot more hesitant with knitting machine, as I was worried about
breaking the carriage. However this part of my course proved me wrong. I didn't
experiment with yarns but as you’ll see later on I did experiment with something
very different. Spoiler: it is a material commonly used by plumber’s. I never
imagined that knitting could be like this and I am so glad that the lecturers advised
me to do knit. This was the start of me fully falling in love with knitting,
via experimenting with how far I could push its boundaries.
Setting my own brief:
Now you can probably guess, but surprise,
surprise I picked the 1960's as my theme. You may have probably seen that in my
previous blogs, I have in the past explored lots of different areas within the
sixties, but for this brief I chose to focus on my favourite theme of the time:
space age. To me this fashion trend was totally different to anything that had
been done before, and still to this day I am fascinated by it. I decided to
focus on the three iconic space age designers at the time: Pierre Cardin, André
Courreges and my all-time favourite designer Paco Rabanne. Obviously I looked
at their fashion designs from the 1960's but the same year that I was studying
this, was also the same year that the André Courrege's brand come back to the
fashion industry (now known as Courreges.) Therefore I thought it was only right
to look at it as well as Paco Rabannes more recent work.
1960's space age fashion.
Pierre Cardin (1960's).
Andre Courrege (1960's).
Courreges: fall and spring ready-to-wear (2016).
Paco Rabanne (1960's).
Paco Rabanne: spring ready-to-wear (2012).
Paco Rabanne drawings: pencil, marker pen and paper with metal rings.
Andre Courrege drawing: pencil, marker pen and bubble wrap.
Paco Rabanne drawing: marker pen in a variation of circle designs.
1960's space age drawing: pencil and gem stones to create circle and dot designs.
Pierre Cardin drawing: marker pen and paint.
Sequin waste used to create circle patterns.
Paco Rabanne drawing: circle and marker pen circle designs.
Loewe (2016) drawing: pencil and foil designs.
Paco Rabanne (2012) drawing: pencil, paper and staples.
Knitting:
I started off by looking at which fair-isle (punch card) patterns represented my theme, for example stripes and block white
and black geometric shapes that I found in my research such as squares, circle
and triangles. During a tutorial with my lecturer I explained that I really
liked the use of unconventional materials such as plastic and metal in Paco Rabannes
work. She then got up and found an ex students sample of work, which brought
the introduction of metal washers. I had never seen or heard of them
before, which if you haven’t heard of then either, it is a component used in plumbing, I
think it is a cover/connector for taps. I really liked the look of the metal on
top of knitting, to me it looked very Paco Rabanne (although this was not the
ex-students theme, I think it was punk/rock) and I instantly fell in love. This
is where I was proven wrong by knitting like I explained earlier; this showed
me that you can experiment with different materials with knitting. I use to
find it really funny being a young girl walking into the plumbing isle in
B&Q and Homebase just to by supplies for my knitting. However I did find
that it was cheaper to by the washers in bulk form amazon, although my mum wasn't
too impressed with all my deliveries. Below you can see all my final samples,
of which we had to create at least 20. My designs featured lace holes, partial
knitting, fair-isle (punch card) patterns and applying both metal and rubber washers in a variety of different sizes (i had a small M5, medium M6 and large M8/M10).
Stripe tests.
Fair-isle punch card trials.
Design ideas: black and white stripes with lace holes.
Design ideas: smaller rubber washers inside the bigger ones.
Design ideas: metal washers inside the squares of the fair-isle pattern.
Design ideas: small and big washers with lace holes in the middle of the big washers.
Knitting black and white stripes which has rows of lace holes.
Planning what to do with metal washers.
Applying metal washers on the knitting machine.
Figuring out the placement for my washers.
Partial knitting with washers.
Design 1: black and white stripes with lace holes in them.
Design 2: thin black stripes with thicker white stripes which contains three rows of lace holes.
Design 3: thick black stripes with thin white stripes which contains a row of lace holes
Design 4: black, white and silver stripes.
Design 5: black, white and silver stripes with lace holes (Unfortunately when steaming this sample I accidentally hit it with the iron and the silver yarn melted creating this hole. If you are at university don't leave your steaming to the last minute because i didn't have the time to re-knit this).
Design 6: black knitting covered in metal washers. I think this might be my second favourite, it might be simple but it is very Paco Rabanne inspired by being covered in metal circles.
Design 7: black and white stripes with big and small black rubber washers in the white.
Design 8: stripes of small and big rubber washers, with lace holes in the middle of the big washers.
Design 9: rubber washers which sit equally in the black and white stripes, it also has lace holes where the black and white lines join.
Design 10: black and white stripes with small silver washers in the black and small and big black rubber washers in the white. This is my favorite sample.
Design 11: fair-isle square design, where i changed around the fore and back ground colours.
Design 12: fair-isle square design with metal washers in every other square.
Design 13: fair-isle square design with silver metal washer in stripes of, in every square and in no squares.
Design 14: fair-isle square design, changing the colours around to create stripes with rubber and metal washers.
Design 15: fair-isle square design with metal washers in every square and lace holes between the square rows.
Design 16: reverse side of the fair-isle square design with black rubber washers hooked up and lace holes.
Design 17: fair-isle small checker board pattern with lace hole in-between.
Design 18: fair-isle small checker board pattern with a row of small metal washers in-between.
Design 19: plain knitting with partial square knitting sections at the bottom, surrounded by big metal washers.
Design 20: white partial knitted squares with black stripes in-between which are filled with two rows of small metal washers.
Summary:
Although according to my grades my second year was my worst year at uni (due to personal reasons that I might go into one
day). That doesn't mean that I didn't enjoy this year. It might have been hard
at times but I really enjoyed my course. I was overwhelmed to be a finalist for
the David Nieper competition and I really loved experimenting with both metal
and rubber washers. I had enjoyed the knitting that I had done before but this
collection was what I truly wanted to do, even though I had never heard of
washers before. Paco Rabanne is my fashion idol and using metal washers to me
was the closest I could get to this work, without copying him. I’d never want
to copy his work, just create my own version. I had never seen metal applied
to knitting before so to me I was pushing knitting boundaries like Paco Rabanne
did in the fashion industry.
This was just the start of me experimenting
with unconventional materials and applying them to knitting. Which you will see
in next Mondays blog, as this marks the start of my final year at university. If
you follow me on Instagram you might have already seen what did at university
but on there you only see the final designs and not the story behind it.
Thank you so much reading.
Love Karmann jean.
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